Automated climate control systems for vehicle cabins are well known. Such systems include a user input for controlling the climate, a climate control element, such as an air blower, and a control policy.
The control policy is arranged to configure the air blower to output a flow rate and temperature of air according to the control policy, in order to comply with the user input. Various sensors can be included within an interior of the vehicle cabin for sensing climate changes affected by the operation of the air blower. These sensed changes are often fed back to the climate control system which may then re-configure the air blowers, according to the control policy, and in dependence on the sensed climate changes.
Auxiliary climate control features such as seat and steering wheel heaters can also be controlled in the same way. Such heaters are typically manually adjusted by the vehicle user, so that they are switched on for a desired period of time, according to the user's comfort requirements.
Alternative control systems may employ additional sensors for gathering information on physical parameters such as solar load, external air temperature and engine temperature. This information is also used to influence the control of the cabin environment.
This feedback generally occurs by transiently changing the low level control features of the actual air blower, according to the user feedback, whilst leaving the control policy data unchanged. These control features include voltage inputs to thermal elements of the blowers and fan/compressor motors. If there is an error in the control policy data, the user feedback adjustments will be constantly required during use of the climate control system.
Such a system places a large burden on the feedback functionality, and thus on the on board computer and sensors. This is particularly true with most existing systems since the control policy data is typically estimated, often using crude techniques. Accordingly, such errors in control policy data and the corresponding impact on user feedback functionality are common.
Against this background, it is an aim of the present invention to overcome or at least substantially alleviate the disadvantages known in the prior art.